Understandably, the patrons were terrified to see people walk into their screening with weapons and panicked, calling the police in fear that a repeat of last year’s tragedy in Colorado was about to happen. The cinema owner later told reporters that he’d planned the stunt months ago, and that only “a few” of the patrons were upset by the move.

Local police noted that if any of the cinema-goers had been armed, this could all have gone even more horribly wrong than it already did.

iron man showing up at the movie theater? good idea. people showing up dressed in military style gear with weapons? bad idea. sad thing is that the movie theater owner had planned this stunt months ago and not once did it ever cross his mind “hmmm…….people brandishing weapons in a dark theater might (a) scare the shit out of everyone or (b) someone in the audience might be armed and take matters into their own hands”.

HOGNE & MATT – Chances are, many of the patrons were armed (Missouri has minimalist gun laws), and would have defended themselves, if need be, unlike the unfortunate citizens of the Colorado movie cinema massacre.

“Local police noted that if any of the cinema-goers had been armed, this could all have gone even more horribly wrong than it already did.”

This may seem like a minor point, but Missouri is a conceal-and-carry state, and Jefferson City is the part of the state where huge portions of the population are happy to take the state up on that offer. Which makes the theatre owner even more of an idiot.

One, undoubtedly, not a very well thought out stunt on the part of the cinema owners.

Two, could the headline and write-up here be any more ridiculously incendiary than it is?. The picture looks like they are cosplaying in the lobby, rather than “storming” the scene. Am I missing part of the story or were the un-named and un-quoted patrons, “terrified” as they were, also too stupid to note a guy in a plastic Iron man costume before they started calling cops?

Lastly, cops apparently start pontificating on what might have happened if theatre-goers were armed. Might and if. Purely hypothetical conjecture. Somebody’s talking about a scenario they dreamed up, and commenters are saying this proves, demonstrates, exemplifies how people shouldn’t be armed. Hypothetical scenarios are by definition not proof of anything because it is literally stuff that’s made up.

I realize most of you people are biased liberal, but good Christ almighty, do you ever ask yourself which actually comes first each day, the news or your opinion on it?

How stupid do you have to be to think people would want to see guys with guns (real or fake) walk in to ANY public place unannounced?! Even if it was just Iron Man walking it, it would be kind of weird. But… men with guns walking into a movie theater? WTF.

And to everyone trying to politicize this, grow up and stop being such reactionary ninnies. We should all just be damn lucky that no one actually got hurt. Whether anyone in the audience did have or could have concealed carry, the overriding point is that no one got hurt. So many those “yokels” in the “flyover” states aren’t as stupid as you think they are, and unlike many of you ninnies who have never actually held a gun in your lives–a lot of people who own them ARE responsible. Personally, I don’t own a gun and don’t like the idea of people carrying them. But the keyword is individual responsibility, not crying to the government to enslave you because you’re too scared of living. Guns often lead to a lot of problems, but without them we never would have gained many of the freedoms that politically correct cowards take for granted.

The point here is that without guns, a gun owner doesn’t need to be responsible with a gun and the rest of us who have the brains not to walk around with loaded deadly weapons for little to no reason don’t have to worry that you might be an idiot with a gun. I’m slightly uncomfortable relying for my life and limb on the common sense of random people around me.

The owner of this cinema should know better…..this isn’t about “guns or no guns?”, it’s about common decency. Doing this after what happened in Denver is without excuse. It is sad to think that (unless he’s a complete moron) he probably did this knowing what would happen, simply for the publicity.

Were the paying customers refunded for having their movie-going experience ruined, and their anxiety heightened? Adding to the “guns or no guns?” debate…..if those in theatre would have been carrying firearms, this never would have happened in the first place.

There is no cure for stupid and gun owners are by no means exempt. But the government can’t run the post office, control drugs and regulate the economy so I know there is point here somewhere…. Right Bush or Obama or Putin or insert the ideologue is worse than my dumbass neighbor.

Missouri is conceal-and-carry. Would be interesting to know if anyone in the audience was C&C and packing, as it would provide an example that an armed populace does not mean wanton shooting and shoot-first-question-later tragedies. (Along with the C&C allowance, there’s a rather stringent training program.)

The scared people are idiots. Clearly a fake repulsor would do far more damage than a fake pistol would. If they didn’t think the Shield agents weren’t real Shield Agents, why weren’t they terrified that someone stole Ironman’s armor and was attacking a movie theater?

RJ Carter says:
>>>Missouri is conceal-and-carry. Would be interesting to know if anyone in the audience was C&C and packing, as it would provide an example that an armed populace does not mean wanton shooting and shoot-first-question-later tragedies. (Along with the C&C allowance, there’s a rather stringent training program.)<<<

I'm not sure if you're from Missouri but the CCW "training" here is a joke. It's a one-day seminar at the end of which you have to demonstrate that you can hit a target from 21 feet away. And my brother-in-law, who is an extremely vocal 2nd amendment advocate, said that when he took the training they literally OK'd you if you could hit it from six feet back.

The problem with the public being armed is that even trained police aren’t very good shots. A few months ago an ex-cop went on a rampage in Los Angeles, killing police and related people. When a car was seen driving slowly down an LA street one morning, police misidentified the car as the gunman’s (it was actually two women delivering the LA Times) and without verifying anything the police opened fire. One hundred bullets were fired but only one of the two women in the car was hit (twice) and the other wasn’t shot at all (just wounded by breaking glass). The car was shot to hell though. Los Angeles quickly settled with the women for $4 million to avoid an embarrassing trial.

This would have been a really cool stunt and little show… IF the idiots planning it had both told people about a special performance and they made sure not to have fake weapons on display in public save for in the thearter after the announcement of a special cosplay show. I feel bad for that vet freaking out after seeing that dumbass cosplayer walkng out in public in full military gear and not all that fake looking prop guns.

I remember a cpuple years ago there was an incident where a cosplayer at Anime Boston dressed as like an Umbrella black ops merc was walking outside the con in the streets and police asked him to stop and the idiot ran away causing a bit of a panic. They maybe even drew guns on him. Here is hoping nothing like that with some idiot codplay kid happens in a couple of weeks at this years con after what happened recently.